All you need for achieving meaning in life

Madonna in the "Material Girl" video

The years since Madonna's 1984-5 hit "Material Girl" have seen a compounding of the superficial and manipulative mentality that she portrayed in the song and video: "I'm a material girl 'cause everybody's living in a material world". Though trinkets and sparkle might not be what appeals today, there remains a focus on the "right" clothes, appearance, possessions and behaviours, even politically correct beliefs, as the source of happiness. 

But if the focus today is on what we can see and touch and taste, there is also the unsettling feeling that the foundations are cracking with regard the global culture's central principle of grabbing whatever each of us can of the world while we can. In other words, there are troubling doubts that possessions, power, and fame are where happiness lies.

That unsettling feeling is prominent within the populations of the developed world, though the glitz of the material world enthralls many who are climbing out of poverty. The negative results include alienation from the family, community groups and society as a whole, leading to mental illness and suicide.

Some mental health facts:

💢 In 2019, there were an estimated 51.5 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States with some kind of mental illness. This number represented 20.6% of all U.S. adults.

💢 The prevalence of mental illness was higher among females (24.5%) than males (16.3%).

💢 Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of any mental illness (29.4%) compared to adults aged 26-49 years (25.0%) and aged 50 and older (14.1%).

💢 Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of serious mental illness (8.6%) compared to adults aged 26-49 years (6.8%) and aged 50 and older (2.9%).

The Mental Health America organisation states that youth mental health is worsening, with 9.7% of youth in the U.S. having severe major depression, compared to 9.2% in the previous dataset.  Even before Covid-19, the prevalence of mental illness among adults was increasing. In 2017-2018, 19% of adults experienced a mental illness, an increase of 1.5 million people over the previous dataset.

Furthermore, suicidal ideation among adults is increasing. The percentage of adults in the U.S. who are experiencing serious thoughts of suicide increased 0.15% from 2016-2017 to 2017-2018 – an additional 460,000 people from the previous dataset. 

Therefore, it's worth exploring why alienation and depression and meaninglessness take hold of so many in any society. 

One component is the "Is this all?" factor. That European society was moving ever more quickly to a this-world mindset was clear to Aldous Huxley when he wrote Brave New World in 1931. In his futuristic novel where everyone is conditioned, even in the test tube, Huxley has the Europe controller trying to prevent his population from independently looking at the purpose of their existence. He worries that a new research paper on that topic...

...might make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal [of life] was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge.

Concern over the lack of a transcendental perspective has continued from Huxley to John Harris, a Guardian columnist, who has written a piece titled, "How do faithless people like me make sense of this past year of Covid?" He was writing after a year of lockdown as a person without a belief in God - "the sudden fear of serious illness and death, and the sense of all of it being wholly random and senseless":

Like millions of other faithless people, I have not even the flimsiest of narratives to project on to what has happened, nor any real vocabulary with which to talk about the profundities of life and death. Beyond a handful of close friends and colleagues and my immediate family, there has been no community of like minds with whom I have talked about how I am feeling or ritualistically marked the passing of all these grinding weeks and months. 

Even now, with restrictions soon to be lifted, the chance of any shared reflection on the last year’s events still seems slim. Secularised societies do not really work like that. And Britain is a perfect example, as proved by a prospect that somehow feels both exciting and absurd: a return to shops, pub gardens and “normality”, and people being encouraged to make merry as if nothing has happened. 

Harris seeks to make sense of the pandemic's sickness and death, and to grow from the experience - but "secularised societies do not really work like that." No wonder depression sets in. He envies those who have faith:

In the first phase of the pandemic, there were clear signs that a lot of us needed much more. Across 95 countries, Googling the word “prayer” increased by 50%, surpassing the level associated with Christmas and Ramadan. In April 2020, a service led by the Archbishop of Canterbury from his kitchen table drew 5 million viewers, described by the Church of England as the largest congregation in its history.

And since then, as churches, mosques, synagogues and temples have been at the heart of some communities’ Covid experiences, the symbols and rituals of religion have made very visible comebacks. They were seen again in last week’s doorstep vigil, complete with candles and massed silence, for the people lost to Covid.

He tells how English and Continental societies coped with the Black Death. The people had Church supported guilds and fraternal groups to help each other, and  “did not cease thinking in terms of community and rebirth”.

Today, a mixture of individualism and collective denial leaves many of us without the ideas or language to conceive of Covid like that. And besides, even if we wanted, once rules allow us to try and make shared sense of our recent experiences in the company of others, where would we do it? “When it comes to mortality, we have relatively few social institutions that allow us to talk about it, and see each other through it,” said John Sabapathy, a medieval historian at University College London.

Through decades of secularisation, cheered on by irreligious liberals, not nearly enough thought was ever given to what might take on the social roles of a church. 

That's what Harris's column goes on to discuss - where people can come together to avoid loneliness and alienation and depression. 

But this post is not intended to promote Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, where people "use" religion to buoy their own ego or a well-being still steeped in individualism. The point here is how important God is to the life of any and every human, that absolute truth can be found with God, that we know through personal experience that God loves each one of us.

A religious, specifically a Catholic narrative about what we are here on earth for, about the purpose of life with all its challenges, is given in this reflection on the August 1 Bible readings at Mass:

Is your life aimless?  Do you feel life is worth living?  Or would you prefer to die not because there is a better life in the next world but simply because this life with all its struggles, challenges, sufferings or even pleasures is meaningless?  The scripture readings today invite us to reflect deeper on how we are living our life.  Most of us just drift through life, existing but not living fully.

When we do that, we are no better than animals, eating, sleeping, enjoying and working.  We do not have a purpose, a goal, an orientation.  Even if we do have, does it really bring us true happiness or just an illusory and transitory contentment?  St Paul urged the Christians in Ephesus, “I want to urge you in the name of the Lord, not to go on living the aimless kind of life that pagans live.”

What would you consider to be an aimless life?  An aimless life is one that thrives on pleasure and physical fulfilment only.  Many of us are contented with this level of living.  All we seek in life is to provide pleasure to the body.  Our primary concern is food, comfort and excitement.  We are sensual, materialistic and consumeristic.  That was the way the Israelites behaved in the first reading. 

At any rate, very few are contented with what they have, even the richest man on earth.  We want more and more.  We are never contented, for the moment we have it, we get bored, and to keep us going, we find new objectives and new hobbies to entertain ourselves.

Nevertheless, it is not surprising how we respond to physical and material needs.   Even the crowd that followed Jesus in the gospel sought for food and pleasure as well.  They were not interested in Jesus except what He could do for them in terms of physical and material security.  But they were not truthful to themselves and their real intention of seeking Jesus.  

They just wanted to make use of Jesus for their temporal needs in life.  They did not look further than just material satisfaction and physical liberation from the Romans.

This is where Jesus is inviting us to seek something more than mere material and physical needs.  Whilst they are essential for us to live, they cannot give us life, for as St Paul would say, “the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”  (Rom 14:17) Jesus said to the people, “Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life, the kind of food the Son of Man is offering you, for on him the Father, God himself, has set his seal.”  

One of the reasons why many successful and rich people find life empty and meaningless in spite of their wealth and fame, is simply because once our body is satisfied, our spirit seeks something more.  This itself is a clear proof that we are not just constituted of matter, but we have a soul, since nothing on this earth that is material can satisfy us and even if it does, it is only temporary.  In fact, when we are rich and well to do, when our comforts are met, we find ourselves living in a vacuum.  The soul is thirsting for something which the body cannot satisfy.

So what is it that causes us to feel empty, especially when we are successful, have a reasonably comfortable life, a good career, good health and have sufficient money to live on? Did the people stop complaining after God gave them meat and bread to their hearts content?  The truth is that Israel’s complaints against God never ended.  They were always greedy and the word “enough” did not exist in their vocabulary, like ours as well. They failed the test that God set for them, which was to trust Him and His divine providence.  

So what is causing us to feel empty is to think that if we have plenty of money, our life would be fulfilled and we will have no more suffering or worries or fears in life.  If we go by all the TV serials, the rich often live very complicated lives simply because when we are wealthy, we are not too sure who our real friends are.

Saint Augustine writes in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You."

Happiness and fulfilment can come only when we have meaning and purpose.  This can only be found in God and then expressed in cultivating wholesome relationships and doing works of charity.  If our meaning and purpose is found in this life, then it cannot sustain us for long.  If we think that getting an academic degree can fulfil us, then the moment we attain it, life has no longer any meaning.  Then we will always be creating meaning for ourselves by setting one goal after another.

 But no matter what achievements we arrive at, when we actually arrive, it becomes an anti-climax.  This is why meaning and purpose can only be found in God, for we can never fully fathom God since God is in us and above all.  As the Lord told the Samaritan woman who was also seeking the fulness of life, that she must search for the living water instead.  (Jn 4:10-15) Only God can quench the thirst in us.

The consequence of our union with the Lord is to belong to His body, the Church, which means also that we are in fellowship with His people, living together as one, caring and supporting each other in faith and love.  And indeed, it is when we are in good relationship with God and with our fellowmen, that we find meaning.

To receive this Bread of Life, we only need to believe in Him.  This is the work that is required of us, not our good works or any other works.  When they asked the Lord, “What must we do if we are to do the works that God wants?’ Jesus gave them this answer, ‘This is working for God: you must believe in the one He has sent.'”  In other words, faith in Jesus is to allow His Spirit to work in and through us.  We do good only because His Spirit inspires us and empowers us to do so. 

Faith in Jesus is what gives us fulfilment, life, love and joy.  Faith in Jesus means that we will live a life of love and self-giving to our brothers and sisters in the whole world. This is what St Paul said, “You must give up your old way of life; you must put aside your old self, which gets corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth.”

 As a sidebar, I want to offer this observation by the same pastor, namely the Catholic Archbishop of Singapore, William Goh:

Why do some of us go through life without a sense of direction?  We just drift through life, trying to keep ourselves alive with some pleasures and luxuries in life.  But our life is meaningless.  We have no real purpose for our existence.  We work to keep ourselves alive and to make a living.  We might even appear to be active doing many things but without direction and coherence.  At the end of the day, we will be burnt-out with all sorts of activities, but achieve nothing substantial.

The Christian is different and distinguishes himself or herself from how worldly people live, with their selfish and self-centred values, contrary to the gospel of humility, dying to self, compassion, forgiveness and humble service.  This is the real challenge of being a Christian today, to have the courage to be identified as one.  What the world wants is for us to be identified with them.   The world wants us to absorb their worldly values so that we will not be a reproach to their self-centred lifestyle or be a conscience to society.

Today, the Christian message of freedom, marriage, sexuality, sanctity of life is being distorted, not just by unbelievers but even by false prophets from within our Church who want to please the world.

Therefore, the Christian has a sense of direction, an awareness of the need to be countercultural, a purpose in life that goes beyond the mundane, and seeks to pass on the good news that we can center our lives on a personal God, who is omniscient, omnipotent, infinite and loving.  

In conclusion, to come back to John Harris's column, here is a response from Richard Harries, a peer in Britain's Parliament, the House of Lords:   

It would indeed be good, as John Harris argues, to have more public spaces for communal activities, but that does not get to the heart of the issue. Those who meet in synagogues, churches, mosques, temples and gurdwaras all believe they have some insight into a reality not of their making – one which makes sense of life and gives hope even in times of despair. Great though it is to come together on the basis of a shared interest in football, motherhood, the local community or chess, this can be no real substitute for what religious people believe religion has to offer.

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United Nations: Human family faces an urgent choice!

 Crisis after crisis - a shared test for humanity, says Antonio Guterres. UN photo (cropped) 

The world is heading in the wrong direction and without change a breakdown in social order can be expected and a future of perpetual crisis, the head of the United Nations Antonio Guterres states in a report on the many global problems that are coming together to produce a "do or die" moment for human life on this planet.

His study,  Our Common Agenda, contains a grim list of stress points that highlight how the fabric of international well-being is unlikely to hold unless a combined effort is undertaken without delay.

However, the report, with its frightening outlook for humankind, seems to have been lost in a weekend where the news cycle was focused largely on remembering the 9/11 attack and sports events. That's a shame because its contents are compelling reminders of how the priorities of leading countries have created a furnace that is set to consume all that makes life on this planet possible.  

The introduction lays out our predicament:

We are at an inflection point in history. The Covid-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call and with the climate crisis now looming, the world is experiencing its biggest shared test since the Second World War.

Humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: breakdown or breakthrough. The choices we make — or fail to make — today could result in further breakdown and a future of perpetual crises, or a breakthrough to a better, more sustainable, peaceful future for our people and planet. 

The United Nations was created after World War Two to manage conflicts between nation states. Today, it increasingly confronts issues across countries such as disease, poverty, migration, or climate change.

Our Common Agenda argues that: 

The coronavirus disease (Covid-19) is upending our world, threatening our health, destroying economies and livelihoods and deepening poverty and inequalities.

Conflicts continue to rage and worsen.

The disastrous effects of a changing climate – famine, floods, fires and extreme heat – threaten our very existence.

For millions of people around the world, poverty, discrimination, violence and exclusion are denying them their rights to the basic necessities of life: health, safety, a vaccination against disease, clean water to drink, a plate of food or a seat in a classroom.

Increasingly, people are turning their backs on the values of trust and solidarity in one another – the very values we need to rebuild our world and secure a better, more sustainable future for our people and our planet.

Humanity’s welfare – and indeed, humanity’s very future – depend on solidarity and working together as a global family to achieve common goals. 

The report's information on living conditions came from all around the world:

One message rang through loud and clear: the choices we make, or fail to make, today could result in further breakdown, or a breakthrough to a greener, better, safer future.

The choice is ours to make; but we will not have this chance again.  

 To look at the impact of the crises as analysed in the report:

The coronavirus disease pandemic has been a challenge like no other since the Second World War, revealing our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness. It has exposed human rights concerns and exacerbated deep fragilities and inequalities in our societies. It has amplified disenchantment with institutions and political leadership as the virus has lingered. We have also seen many examples of vaccine nationalism.

Let there be no illusion: Covid-19 may pale in comparison to future challenges if we do not learn from failures that have cost lives and livelihoods.

 What awaits us in the scenario of breakdown and perpetual crisis without concerted healthcare action:

• Covid-19 is endemic, constantly mutating

• Richer countries hoard vaccines, no plan for equitable distribution

• Health systems are overwhelmed

• No preparedness for future pandemics

• Some countries are poorer in 2030 than before the pandemic hit

 The scenario of breakdown and perpetual crisis without concerted environmental action:

• Owing to unchanged emission levels from human activity, global warming of 2°C will be exceeded during the twenty-first century

• Heatwaves, floods, droughts, tropical cyclones and other extremes are unprecedented in magnitude, frequency and timing, and occur in regions that have never been affected before

• The Arctic is ice free in the summer; most permafrost is lost and extreme sea levels occur every year

• One million species are on the verge of extinction, with irreversible biodiversity loss

• More than 1 billion people live with heat that is so extreme that it threatens their lives

 The scenario of breakdown and perpetual crisis without action to reverse destabilizing inequalities:

• Continuous erosion of human rights

• Growing poverty, and massive loss of jobs and income

• Public goods like education and social protection systems are underfunded

• Protests spread across borders, often met with violent repression

• Technology fuels division

• New types of warfare invented faster than new ways of making peace

The report states: 

Our best projections show that a stark choice confronts us: to continue with business as usual and risk significant breakdown and perpetual crisis, or to make concerted efforts to break through and achieve an international system that delivers for people and the planet. These omens must not be ignored, nor these opportunities squandered.  

Before going to the report's positive scenario, one element that needs to be factored in is that of solidarity: 

Everything proposed in this report depends on a deepening of solidarity. Solidarity is not charity; in an interconnected world, it is common sense. It is the principle of working together, recognizing that we are bound to each other and that no community or country can solve its challenges alone. 

It is about our shared responsibilities to and for each other, taking account of our common humanity and each person’s dignity, our diversity and our varying levels of capacity and need. The importance of solidarity has been thrown into sharp relief by Covid-19 and the race against variants, even for countries that are well advanced with vaccination campaigns.

No one is safe [from the virus] until everyone is safe. The same is true of our biodiversity, without which none of us can survive, and for actions to address the climate crisis. In the absence of solidarity, we have arrived at a critical paradox: international cooperation is more needed than ever but also harder to achieve.

Through a deeper commitment to solidarity, at the national level, between generations and in the multilateral system, we can avoid the breakdown scenario and, instead, break through towards a more positive future.

Now for the scenario of breakthrough and the prospect of a greener, safer better future. First, that of a sustainable recovery from our present crises:

 • Vaccines shared widely and equitably

• Capacity to produce vaccines for future pandemics within 100 days and to distribute them globally within a year

• People in crisis and conflict settings have a bridge to better lives

• Revised international debt architecture

• Business incentives are reshaped to support global public goods

• Progress to address illicit financial flows, tax avoidance and climate finance

• Financial and economic systems support more sustainable, resilient and inclusive patterns of growth

Second, the positive outlook for healthy people and planet based on solidarity:

 • Global temperature rise is limited to 1.5°C

• All countries and sectors decarbonize by 2050

• Support provided to countries heavily affected by climate emergencies

• Just transitions to a new labour ecosystem are ensured

• A functioning ecosystem is preserved for succeeding generations

• Communities are equipped to adapt and be resilient to climate change impacts

Finally, with trust and protection the scenario looks like this:

 • Strong commitment to the universality and indivisibility of human rights

• Universal social protection floors, including universal health coverage

• Universal digital connectivity

• Quality education, skills enhancement and lifelong learning

• Progress on addressing gender, racial, economic and other inequalities

• Equal partnership between institutions and the people they serve and among and within communities to strengthen social cohesion

Which brings us back to solidarity, specifically the search for the common good by way of a social contract:

A strong social contract anchored in human rights at the national level is the necessary foundation for us to work together. It may not be written down in any single document, but the social contract has profound consequences for people, underpinning their rights and obligations and shaping their life chances. It is also vital for international cooperation, since bonds across countries do not work when bonds within them are broken.

The inequality, mistrust and intolerance that we are seeing in many countries and regions, heightened by the devastating impact of the pandemic, suggest that the time has come to renew the social contract for a new era in which individuals, States and other actors work in partnership to build trust, increase participation and inclusion and redefine human progress.

The deepening of solidarity at the national level must be matched by a new commitment to young people and future generations, to whom the opening words of the Charter of the United Nations make a solemn promise. Strengthened solidarity is long overdue with the existing generation of young people, who feel that our political, social and economic systems ignore their present and sacrifice their future.

We must take steps to deliver  better education and jobs for them and to give them a greater voice in designing their own futures. We must also find ways to systematically consider the interests of the 10.9 billion people who are expected to be born this century, predominantly in Africa and Asia: we will achieve a breakthrough only if we think and act together on their behalf for the long term.

To support solidarity within societies and between generations, we also need a new deal at the global level. The purpose of international cooperation in the twenty-first century is to achieve a set of vital common goals on which our welfare, and indeed survival, as a human race depend. Notably, we need to improve the protection of the global commons and the provision of a broader set of global public goods, those issues that benefit humanity as a whole and that cannot be managed by any one State or actor alone.

Just as the founders of the United Nations came together determined to save succeeding generations from war, we must now come together to save succeeding generations from war, climate change, pandemics, hunger, poverty, injustice and a host of risks that we may not yet foresee entirely. This is Our Common Agenda. 

As part of the effort to rebuild trust among particpants in each society, the Common Agenda urges tax reform locally and internationally:

A reformed international tax system is needed to respond to the realities of growing cross-border trade and investment and an increasingly digitalized economy while also addressing existing shortcomings in fair and effective taxation of businesses and reducing harmful tax competition.

The G20 has agreed on a new international tax architecture that addresses the tax challenges arising from globalization and digitalization and introduces a global minimum tax for corporations, with a blueprint in place for broader implementation under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The internet:

The internet has altered our societies as profoundly as the printing press did, requiring a deep reimagining of the ethics and mindsets with which we approach knowledge, communication and cohesion. Along with the potential for more accessible information and rapid communication and consultation, the digital age, particularly social media, has also heightened fragmentation and “echo chambers” [listening to only like-minded views]. Objectivity, or even the idea that people can aspire to ascertain the best available truth, has come increasingly into question. 

 Some facts and figures relating to the need for investment in social protection, meaning public welfare:

• The wealth of billionaires increased by over US$3.9 trillion between March and December 2020, while 4 billion people are still without any form of basic social protection.

• 92 per cent of African women are in the informal economy. This keeps them outside of social security systems.

• A total of $78 billion would be needed for low-income countries to establish social protection floors, including health care, covering their combined population of 711 million people.

The rationale for social protection is given here:

Social protection systems have demonstrated their value during the COVID-19 pandemic, saving lives and backstopping economies at large. Without the surge in State-provided social protection, economic damage could have been far worse. This is also the case for previous crises. We must not lose this momentum. A new era for social protection systems would be a foundation for peaceful societies and other measures to leave no one behind and eradicate extreme poverty.

I urge States to accelerate steps to achieve universal social protection coverage, including for the remaining 4 billion people currently unprotected, in line with target 1.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals. While the types and modalities of coverage may vary, at a minimum this means access to health care for all and basic income security for children, those unable to work and older persons.

Then there is work:

Decent work opportunities for all are also needed for shared prosperity. With the nature and types of work transforming rapidly, this requires a floor of rights and protections for all workers, irrespective of their employment arrangements, as laid out in the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work. Workers should not shoulder all the risks when it comes to their income, their hours of work and how they cope if they are ill or unemployed.

Investment in sectors with the greatest potential for creating more and better jobs, such as the green, care and digital economies, is key and can be brought about through major public investment, along with incentive structures for long-term business investments consistent with human development and well-being.

The inadequacy of using gross domestic product to measure a nation's development success is expressed forcefully:

We know that GDP fails to account for human well-being, planetary sustainability and non-market services and care, or to consider the distributional dimensions of economic activity. Absurdly, GDP rises when there is overfishing, cutting of forests or burning of fossil fuels. We are destroying nature, but we count it as an increase in wealth. Such discussions have been ongoing for decades. It is time to collectively commit to complementary measurements. Without that fundamental shift, the targets that we have fixed in relation to biodiversity, pollution and climate change will not be achievable. 

"Women's work" is given due attention:

In rethinking GDP, we must also find ways to validate the care and informal economy. Specifically, most of the care work around the world is unpaid and done by women and girls, perpetuating economic inequality between genders. COVID-19 also had deeply gendered economic and job impacts that highlighted and exacerbated the trillions of dollars that are lost owing to billions of hours of unpaid care work performed every year.

Rethinking the care economy means valuing unpaid care work in economic models but also investing in quality paid care as part of essential public services and social protection arrangements, including by improved pay and working conditions (target 5.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals). More broadly, we also need to find new ways to account for and value the vast informal economy.

More facts and figures, this time relating to the transition to a green economy:

• Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, chemicals and other pollutants is responsible for the death of 7 million people every year, costing around $5 trillion annually.

 • Shifting to a green economy could yield a direct economic gain of US$26 trillion through 2030 compared with business-as-usual and create over 65 million new low-carbon jobs.

The immediate task:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned us in August 2021 that we are at imminent risk of hitting the dangerous threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the near term. Every fraction of a degree represents lost lives, livelihoods, assets, species and ecosystems. We should be dramatically reducing emissions each year, towards a 45 per cent reduction by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050, as made clear by the Panel, yet temperatures continue to rise. 

We should be shoring up our populations, infrastructure, economies and societies to be resilient to climate change, yet adaptation and resilience continue to be seriously underfunded.

Climate Breakdown or Breakthrough 

Climate change - Transforming food systems:

• Sustainable food systems and strong forest protection could generate over $2 trillion per year of economic benefits, create millions of jobs and improve food security, while supporting solutions to climate change.

In conclusion, the "Moving Forward" section points to the 12 elements that have guided this report:

This vision builds on and responds to the declaration on the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, in which Member States made 12 critical commitments:

• to leave no one behind; 

• to protect our planet;

• to promote peace and prevent conflict;

• to abide by international law and ensure justice;

• to place women and girls at the centre;

• to build trust;

• to improve digital cooperation;

• to upgrade the United Nations;

• to ensure sustainable financing;

• to boost partnerships;

• to listen to and work with youth; and

• to be prepared for future crises.   

In the past, newspapers would have had the social responsibility - and the capacity - to do what I have done here, to mine an important international document in order to allow readers to develop their citizenship skills by becoming aware of what international leaders are saying about the needs of Planet Earth, and the care of the human family. I hope you found this material as informative as I did. 

Ω Here is the best news report I could find in a check of all the main news sources relating to this significant document. 

Ω The thrust of  Our Common Agenda is contained in the 2015 letter to the world of Pope Francis, Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home. See here.

Ω If you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.

Yes, we do have a soul: What this means.

In the course of writing my previous post on the inability of neuroscientists to pinpoint where in the brain or its processes the human's intellectual and decision-making capabilities arise, it struck me that many people are likely to be unfamiliar with the concept of the soul, perhaps only knowing of  the term from its use in "soul music" or the saying, "It's got no soul!" (as in Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street").

Fundamentally, the soul is of central importance in understanding the human person because it endows the person with the dignity that we find in declarations of human rights and, generally, in claims that everyone must be treated equally and justly. 

The only way the human person can claim a dignity above the rest of the natural world, and an equality among peers, is through the mutual acknowledgement that each person has a transcendent character,  a quality that is beyond the material. This is often referred to as the brain-mind mystery, as discussed in that previous post.

In other words, if the person is held to be only of a material nature, then there is no solid base for the human to claim a dignity above any other element of the natural world, deflating any likelihood of  successfully creating a system of moral behaviour that would be upheld in society. 

We can see this breakdown of the moral order in Western countries with the secularization of the culture. This has led to the Godless principle that there are no boundaries on human behaviour. as expressed by US Supreme Court judge Anthony Kennedy in 1992: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." 

Neuroscientists, as we saw in my previous post, recognise that their research has shown the limitations of attempts to discover in the brain's functions the source of human consciousness, or of the power of reasoning, or of the independence of the will, which are what Catholics refer to as the spiritual faculties of the human person.

As well as making possible self-reflection, meaning our consciousness, the soul is where we exercise our intellect and free will, where we believe and love, sin, and yearn for goodness, beauty, truth, and for God.

What all of us are dealing with as we explore our human capabilities are features of human existence that have been puzzling people through all time. We have the ancients, then the Greeks and Romans, and the creators of Hinduism and Buddhism, and the varied array of animists over the millennia, who have laboured over the same matter, an awareness that the body is not all that we are. A typical example is the case of  the Dyaks and Sumatrans who, as anthropologists in what is now Indonesia found, bound various parts of the body with cords during sickness to prevent the escape of what animated the body. 

However, it is the Catholic doctrine of the soul that is most useful to examine because it enshrines the principles of ancient speculation, and is ready to receive and assimilate the fruits of modern research. 

First, this post will clarify what Catholics mean by the soul, and then it will provide some scientific insight into why there should be respect for its doctrine.

The human person is a single entity defined by material and spiritual components such that the spiritual soul is metaphysically the “form of the body” (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 362-368).

This phrase is defined by the Church. It means that a human body can only exist as a holistic and functional reality in the cosmos through the spiritual soul. And by corollary, it means that the spiritual soul holds all the material powers of the body in integral unity as human and personal. 

It is also Catholic doctrine that body and soul do not share the same genesis because matter and spirit are not one common order of existence. This need not imply any opposition between matter and spirit. Both matter and spirit are ultimately from God’s creative hand. The body comes from the parents, but the soul is fused with the body to be the "holistic reality" spoken of above (CCC 382). Another way this is described is that the soul animates the body, so that we are an ensouled body (rather than an embodied soul). 

The soul has a natural aptitude and need for existence in the body. But it is not wholly immersed in matter, because its higher operations are intrinsically independent of the organism. This "rational soul"  is produced by special creation and is of a higher order than the "vegetative" and "sensitive" souls that are part of the different levels of the purely material world.

Therefore, the soul is that component of human nature that is fully integrated with the body as with the individual and personal centre of control and direction, namely the intellect and will. In this, the body, with its inherited instincts, is acknowledged as integral to our thinking and self-determination, but it is not the full picture.

One writer goes into greater detail:

Our brains no doubt work on the same patterns as other brains in nature, but the human quest for knowledge is not just bounded by the needs of survival. We indulge in pure speculation and seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Our minds delve far beyond the things we can reach directly with the physical senses. We reach out to the very boundaries of creation and beyond. This is both the wonder and the burden of being human.

We also yearn for more than just the satisfaction of bodily needs. The human will and creativity faculty are a further witness to our freedom from the environmental harmonics of animal urge and instinct. We actively shape and develop the environment itself based on our own insight into the structure and patterns of Nature. At our best we do this in harmony with the laws of creation, enhancing the world with our own creative developments and inventiveness. Tragically, we can also break the laws of our own well-being and perhaps even the natural harmony of the planet we live upon. We are not supposed to do this, of course, but the fact that we can do so still demonstrates the transcendent power of the human spirit. No purely material creature could break the material laws of directional control that shape and define its very essence.

All of this shows that we are not just creatures who are controlled and directed. We are creatures who exercise control and direction. That is to say, we are not just matter; we are mind as well. Our fairly constant and active consciousness of our physical environment furnishes the foundational experience of what mind and matter are.

The writer goes on, offering this interrogation of evolution:

If it is true that evolution produces more and more powerful brains as it progresses, and this requires more and more control from the environment to ensure its meaningful and balanced behaviour, then, somewhere along the line, things must reach a natural limit. Nature could produce a supreme brain that was still within its control, but if things were to develop one step beyond that, then it would indeed have created something that was out of control and could not be given a programme of life - an animal that had no place or meaning in Nature.

Such a creature would be un-natural by definition. So, in fact, such an event could never happen - at least not on its own. Everything in the universe, including our own brains, is built up on this principle of control and direction, and Nature cannot break its own fundamental law without the whole process of the universe being undermined and coming to grief.

And yet evidently something has given us power over the physical environment, power to work out the laws of nature themselves and control them for our own ends, power even to destroy Nature itself with our technology if we are foolish enough. It looks like the impossible has actually happened. How do we explain this?... 

This ‘new power’ cannot be something material, something which arises from the organisation of atoms and molecules and electrical energies of the universe... Therefore it can only come from one other source. It must come directly from God. The human body comes about from the seed and egg of parents in common with other animals, but the soul is created immediately by God’s loving command and wise, eternal will. Whenever a new human life is conceived the soul must also be there. This is because the formula or pattern that makes up the human body makes no sense and has no place in Nature without the [soul] to hold it together and give it a meaning and a purpose.

All the preceeding gives some insight into the Catholic, and largely Christian, doctrine of the soul. But it would be a sin of omission if I did not add some information about the work of Christians in conducting and analysing research in the realm of consciousness and its transcendental nature.

A good starting point for futher information is the 2015 book The Soul's Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason. Here, the author, Robert Spitzer, examines the research being done that highlights the "transphysical soul" and the "possibility and plausibility of [our ] transcendent nature and destiny."

One quote given in Spitzer's text is from Sir John Eccles (died 1997), the Australian neurophysiologist who won the Nobel Prize for his research on brain synapses. He did a lot of research into how the soul could interact with the material brain.  In a 1990 text he expressed his dismay at the boundaries set by some scientists in what they would accept as to the brain's capabilities:

The materialist critics argue that insuperable difficulties are encountered by the hypothesis that immaterial mental events can act in any way on material structures such as neurons. Such as presumed action is alleged to be incompatible with the conservation laws of physics, in particular of the first law of thermodynamics. This objection would certainly be sustained by nineteenth century physicists, and by neuroscientists and philosophers who are still ideologically in the physics of the nineteenth century, not recognizing the revolution wrought by quantum physicists in the twentieth century.

So it is not the Christians who are backward, but those with heuristic platforms that they will not shift from. Spitzer, a Jesuit priest and scholar,  updates Eccles' view with an overview of more recent scientific contributions, including that a "whole new area of biophysics is developing around  [the use of quantum theory]: neuroquantology".  

In concluding this post, I turn to a summary of Spitzer's extensive analysis of evidence for the soul: 

Father Spitzer's work provides [...]traditional and contemporary evidence for God and the transphysical soul. It shows that we are transcendent beings with souls capable of surviving bodily death; that we are self-reflective beings able to strive toward perfect truth, love, goodness, and beauty; that we have the dignity of being created in the very image of God. If we underestimate these truths, we undevalue one another, underlive our lives, and underachieve our destiny.   

References:

Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907-1912. Access here. 

Robert Spitzer, 2015, The Soul's Upward Yearning, Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason, Ignatius Press, San Francisco.

Faith.org.uk, "Body and Soul - Renewing Catholic Orthodoxy", Editorial, FAITH Magazine, March - April 2008. England. Access here.

Stephen Beale, "What Are We? Body and Soul…and Spirit?", Catholic Exchange, Access here. 

Photo by Monstera from Pexels. (Altered)

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Neuroscientists admit the brain still full of mystery

                                                                              Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels

Two neuroscientists have new books out. In doing the publicity rounds they have shone light on where gaps exist in their understanding of the human intellect and will. The human brain means mystery. 

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University. He is the presenter of a TV series, The Brain, shown on PBS, the BBC and elsewhere. In his latest book, Livewired, "he tells the story of brain plasticity: how your forest of billions of neurons reconfigures every moment over your life," as his website puts it.

So how do we maintain a personal identity while this material transformation is going on? What preserves our subjective consciousness over the course of our life?

In an interview, Eagleman lays out the basics to do with the brain:

What we’re looking at is three pounds [1.36 kg] of material in our skulls that is essentially a very alien kind of material to us. It doesn’t write down memories, the way we think of a computer doing it. And it is capable of figuring out its own culture and identity and making leaps into the unknown. I’m here in Silicon Valley. Everything we talk about is hardware and software.

But what’s happening in the brain is what I call livewire, where you have 86 billion neurons, each with 10,000 connections, and they are constantly reconfiguring every second of your life. Even by the time you get to the end of this paragraph, you’ll be a slightly different person than you were at the beginning.

[...] If you blindfold somebody for an hour, you can start to see changes where touch and hearing will start taking over the visual parts of the brain. 

As if expressing wonderment at the intricacy of that physical process, the interviewer, Andrew Anthony, states:  "Another mystery is consciousness." From one mystery, to another. The interviewer goes on: "Do you think we are close to understanding what consciousness is and how it’s created?" Eagleman replies with admirable humility:

There’s a great deal of debate about how to define consciousness, but we are essentially talking about the thing that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning. But as far as understanding why it happens, I don’t know that we’re much closer than we’ve ever been. It’s different from other scientific conundrums in that what we’re asking is, how do you take physical pieces and parts and translate that into private, subjective experience, like the redness of red, or the pain of pain or the smell of cinnamon? And so not only do we not have a theory, but we don’t really know what such a theory would look like that would explain our experience in physical or mathematical terms.

This points to consciousness being a spiritual capacity that humans alone in creation are endowed with. Eagleman brings out that element when exploring whether, in the future, it will be possible to "glean the details of a person’s life from their brains." His answer indicates his belief is that there is physical content that is ripe for the picking: "our computational capacities are becoming so extraordinary now, it’s just a countdown until we get there." 

However, and this is the most interesting part of his answer if we are thinking of the brain-mind dichotomy, he adds:  

Do we get to keep our inner thoughts private? Almost certainly we will. You can’t stick somebody in a scanner and try to ask them particular kinds of questions. 

That there is clearly something about our intellect and will that is beyond the physical is brought out in an interview with Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex in England.  His book, Being You, has just been published. This is how interviewer Tim Adams introduces his discussion with Seth:

For centuries, philosophers have theorised about the mind-body question, debating the relationship between the physical matter of the brain and the conscious mental activity it somehow creates. Even with advances in neuroscience and brain imaging techniques, large parts of that fundamental relationship remain stubbornly mysterious.

It was with good reason that, in 1995, the cognitive scientist David Chalmers coined the term “the hard problem” to describe the question of exactly how our brains conjure subjective conscious experience. Some philosophers continue to insist that mind is inherently distinct from matter.

So the interview is presented as a look at whether "advances in understanding how the brain functions undermine those ideas of dualism."

Seth's first statement does seem to support a form of "dualism" with his reference to what he calls "emergence":

The reason I’m interested in consciousness is intrinsically personal. I want to understand myself and, by extension, others. But I’m also super-interested for example in developing statistical models and mathematical methods for characterising things such as emergence [behaviour of the mind as a whole that exceeds the capability of its individual parts] and there is no personal component in that.

An example that Seth has given elsewhere is of someone having a pang of jealousy as a result of something seen or heard. Is that jealousy a spiritual or a purely physical experience? How to regard lust or greed, or kindness or compassion? 

Let's explore the interview some more as Seth sets up a study team at Sussex "as a multidisciplinary group, with pure mathematicians, psychologists and computer scientists as well as cognitive neuroscientists."

The starting point is: "The question of how to develop a satisfying scientific explanation of conscious experience."

Tim Adams: Presumably, the mind-body problem is never going to be entirely resolved?

Anil Seth: No, but I’d like to make progress. It’s the boring answer of continuing to do rigorous science [...] My approach is that we risk not understanding the central mystery of life by lurching to one or other form of magical thinking. While science might be a little bit slower, there is much to be done in a straightforward materialist understanding of how the brain relates to conscious experience.

Later in the discussion, Seth comments: 

The philosopher William James said: “Thoughts themselves are the thinkers.” I think that there’s a truth to that. It’s perhaps always a mistake to think of thoughts being produced or observed by a prior internal self. Thought is foundational to psychology, but it’s one of the things that’s hardest to study. You can’t control thought in the same way you can systematically manipulate perception in the lab. So I’ve tended to avoid investigating how the mind wanders and so on.  [My emphasis - BS]

Further on this topic:

But where do thoughts come from? I’m left a little cold by psychoanalytic explanations, which suggest there’s a subconscious trying to get in there and give you some thought that would otherwise be repressed. I think, to me, they’re the maximally abstract version of perception.

Is Seth saying that thoughts usually arise from our sensible experience, but turn into something of a spiritual nature? That fully corresponds with the Christian understanding of the body-spirit unity, the embodied soul or ensouled body, where there is unity of the two elements, but integrity of each individually, with the soul taking precedence because it is of a higher order as to capacity. 

Adams: One pivotal one in your argument about the how and why of consciousness is the idea that “I predict myself, therefore I am”. What is the “I” in that sentence?

Seth: It’s a collection of perceptual predictions. It’s a playful sentence. The “I” is deliberately ambiguous there – it says there is an experience arising of me being a single unified individual, with all these different attributes: memories, emotional bonds, experiences of body. For this piece of flesh and blood here, they seem to be unified – at least if I don’t reflect on it too much. 

Christians would say that the unifying factor is the simple nature the unified body-soul. Seth says that as yet he is agnostic toward the physical-spiritual unity, "the central mystery of life":

I’m agnostic about whether at the end of this programme of trying to account in physical terms for properties of experience, there will still be some residue of mystery left, something more to explain. 

How Seth's views are conflicted are revealed in the next exchange:

Have your thoughts [...] ever taken any spiritual swerve – in terms of the why of there being something rather than nothing?

It’s more that I think there’s hubris in assuming that everything will submit to a mechanistic programme of explanation. I think it’s intellectual honesty to acknowledge that the existence of conscious experience as a phenomenon in a universe for which we generally have physicalist accounts seems weird. I want to figure out the ways in which we can undermine this seeming weird. 

To parse that statement:

First, for sure it is arrogant to assume in the blinkered manner of much of science that the hard reductive principles of physical processes are the only ones to apply. 

Second, Seth acknowledges that the "existence of conscious experience" is totally unexpected in the context of the totality of the evolutionary process. Haven't we known that for millennia!

Third, how can Seth say that with regards this universe, "we generally have physicalist accounts"? Has he not looked to the religious traditions, especially Christianity with its solid history of scholarship, absorbing as it did the penetrating insights of Aristotle and Plato, for a wider reading of the nature of the human person?

Fourth, in this team effort to "undermine this seeming weird" is he fully open to the "spiritual swerve" arising from the answers he gains, or is he going to remain a lazy or feeble agnostic instead of showing a willingness to explore where colleagues, captured by scientism and/or political correctness, fear to tread? 

Fifth, Seth states that perception is a “hallucination” and “a big lie created by our deceptive brains”. Why the negativity, the deprecation of processes that do, in fact, help us to know reality? As another commentator put it:

It does seem perverse to claim that the very physicality of being alive downgrades perception to spontaneous fakery.

Sixth, I find this from Seth somewhat disconcerting as to a person "being you" - "A lot of what we know about human consciousness is based on animal experiments." The professor should leave the octopi alone and focus on the human.

Perhaps his book, which I have not read, does offer a wealth of  research findings on, for example, reflective reason. To quote (with minor editing) Ronald Knox, a Catholic priest and public intellectual, writing 100 [!] years ago in a more relevant way than lately published neuroscientists on concerns how we know we live in the real world: [*]

Run "instinct" for all its worth; show how [humankind's] delicate sensibility in a thousand directions is but the hypertrophy of such instinct; collect whatever instances you will of inherited tendencies, of herd-psychology, and the rest of it - you will still come up against a specific difference bewtween [humans] and the brute which eludes all materialist explanation: I mean the reflective reason.

When your attention, instead of being directed towards some object outside yourself, is directed towards  yourself as thinking or towards your own thinking process, that is the work of the intellect, that is [humankind's] special prerogative.

The phenomenon of the intellect, considered in itself, is not subject to any material laws or susceptible to any material explanation.

The person is the object of their own thought, and in the direction of that act they borrow nothing whatsoever from their material surroundings. 

Therefore, there is an absolute difference between "the living thing that can feel and the living thing that can reflect on its feelings". This is where neuroscience should apply its talents, towards all the manifestations of the intellect and its associated spiritual capacity, the will.

[*] The Beginning and End of Man, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1961 edition (first edition 1921)

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Women's full equality in the Christian family

Husband and wife ... a mutual submission of love, not of inferiority

For Christians, women and men have equal status. Christians also respect the complementarity of women and men as female and male. Women and men approaching marriage have to negotiate with each other the characteristics of that equality, how equality will play out in their real life situation. 

It's very easy for husbands to be lazy, and for wives to be overburdened but unwilling to say "No" as tasks and responsibilities multiply. That is why a clear plan from the start is imperative. Who is going to clean the toilet? Who is going to make the bed? Who is going to take a child to the doctor? It's been said often that love is not a noun but a verb. Love is not an emotion, but it is an act of the will put into effect. "I will love my spouse no matter what!"

The starting point is to recognize the facts:

Man and woman were made "for each other" — not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be "helpmate" to the other, for they are equal as persons ("bone of my bones ..." Genesis 2:23) and complementary as masculine and feminine. [Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 372.]

The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out. [CCC, no. 2333] 

This sounds all right and proper, but how does it stand against Paul's calls in Colossians and Ephesians for wives to submit to husbands?

Scripture scholars tell us that the "household code" that Paul discusses in those two letters, and the kindred admonition to "submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men; the king ... or to governors" (1Peter 2:13) were meant to persuade the society around them that they were not anarchists, given that Christians had broken from worshipping state and traditional gods, and were living with a great deal of freedom as to customary rules and regulations.

Those hierarchical codes, inherited by the New Testament writers from the ethical writings of Aristotle and from the patriarchical setting of Roman law, worked from the superior to the subordinate. So we have to acknowledge that Paul was a man of his time in giving guidance to new believers; he was also working somewhat under the constraints set by the dominant society.

However, we can see how Paul was not to be bound by such structures. In Colossians and Ephesians, he offers advice to the subordinates first and, secondly, he addresses all the social groups directly rather than through "the head of the household" - not "Husbands, teach your wives to be submissive" as was the customary manner of address.

More importantly, there is much that is fresh in Paul's exhortations, much that breaks from custom and the traditional strictures of  family life.

Paul gives each part of the household new status by addressing each independently, expressing a dignity that he had built into church practice by admitting wives and slaves to baptism independently of husband or owner. Also, if the husband or owner became a Christian, the wife and slave did not automatically do likewise, but could make their own decisions.  

More widely in the New Testament, as to the dignity of the individual, we find family ties could be abandoned in favour of becoming a disciple when the family authority had not accepted the subordinate's personal decision. It's easy to see how the enemies of the new "cult" would be quick to accuse it of undermining established social order.

Turning directly to the implications of the exhortation, "Wives be submissive to your husbands", we see that wives have been given dignity and autonomy that supercede the patriarchical codes. Ephesians expresses an equality between husband and wife by linking all behavior to the "ideal of mutual submission to Christ" (5:21).

To look at Colossians' "Wives be subject to your husbands", this is more holy advice than a statement of a rule. The freedom indicated is that of the wife's will, so that making a decision on how to act is a matter of being "subject as the Son is subject to the Father" (1 Cor 11:3; 15:28).  As to men, "Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her..." (3:19), "this not superiority associated with arrogance but instead [the] humility and love that must dictate the behavior of the baptized."  

In turn, to delve into the message of Ephesians, which whether directly or by another's hand, it is like Colossians in that it comes from late in Paul's ministry. So both are mature considerations of family life. The family code passage, 5:22-6:9, is qualified by 5:21, "by calling for the mutual submission of members one to another, and hence in a sense reverses the typical pattern of interaction in the household." Likewise, ...

Ephesians 6:9 relativizes the power of the heads of households by reminding them of the ultimate equality of all before God.

We have touched upon the constraints Paul and other New Testament writers were under, however:

Modern readers [of the New Testament] often ask why the profound sense among New Testament Christians that Christ had transformed the world did not lead to complete transformation of the social order.

The best answer seems to be that it was not seen as wise or practical to do so. ... [Paul's letters] frequently accept existing social arrangements in the process of evangelizing the urban world of the Greco-Roman city.  

Moreover, Paul seems to have been concerned that sudden changes in life or status could cause anxiety and disorder in the fledgling community (cf 1 Cor 7). 

A second element of uncertainty for some readers of Ephesians may come from "the use of marriage as a metaphor for the relationship between divinity and humanity..."

The problem lies in the fact that it is the husband who is seen to represent God or Christ and the woman who is the reflection of the human community (Church or Israel).

The marriage metaphor should never be taken, however, as a statement of male impunity in the face of female fallability.

Such interpretations are, in fact, precluded in the text itself not only by the call for mutual submission of 5:21, but also by the simple fact that both husbands and wives are [equally] part of the Church and ultimately subject to Christ. 

Ephesians is regarded as the most important text in the New Testament on the sanctity of marriage:

This text reveals that marriage can serve as a reflection of the relationship that is the very foundation of Christianity: the union between Christ and the community.

Marriage can serve as the ultimate model of self-giving love and the ultimate sign of God's dealing with the world. 

 A neat commentary on Paul's instruction is given by Fr Frank Doyle in Living Space:

The parallel between the relationship of a husband and wife and that of the Church and Jesus its Lord is full of meaning. Perhaps we have problems with the wife having to submit to her husband "in everything". But it is a submission of love not of inferiority and the same is required of husbands, who are to "love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy". 

Husbands are to love their wives "as they love their own bodies". They are to give at least the same level of care to their partner as they would to themselves. This clearly involves a mutual bonding of deep intensity and commitment which leaves little room for domination or exploitation by either partner. 

Proponents of "women’s liberation" may not be very happy with some of the things said about marriage and wives in that passage. We cannot change the passages which have many beautiful things in it but we do need to sift what is the Word of God and what reflects Paul’s being a man of his times. 

References:

Margaret Y MacDonald, "Ephesians", pages 1670-1686; Carolyn Osiek, "The New Testament Household Codes", page 1707; Cesar Alejandro Mora Paz, "Colossians", pages 697-1709 in The International Bible Commentary, William R Farmer ed., 1998, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN. 

Paul J Kobelski, "The Letter to the Ephesians" pages 883-890; Maurya P Horgan, "The Letter to the Colossians", pages 876-882, in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Raymond E Brown, Joseph A Fitzmyer, Roland E Murphy eds., 1990, Prentice Hall, NJ.

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Gender ideology meets a Christian response

A persons's sex is present in every cell of the body. Photo: Source

Today children are taught in school and through the news media that everyone can choose his or her sex. The issue is troubling many parents whose daughters in particular are being caught in a quagmire of sexual "rights" activism, peer pressure and social media chatter in dealing with the normal difficulties of coming to terms with adolescence.

The consequences can be horrific as, even in teenagers, breasts can be amputated, and male genitalia mutilated either surgically or chemically. The use of drugs on young people has a permanent effect in reshaping their body. Shamefully, medical professionals are capitulating to the activists, such is the cultural dysfunction abroad in society.

In the past decade our culture has seen growing acceptance of the claim that a person’s biological sex and personal identity have no necessary connection. That is, human identity is self-defined and becomes the choice of the individual. People reckon that they can be anything they want to be, no matter the reality of their case.

Kids learn that it’s possible to change one’s sex despite the reality that each person is born as a male or female. They are led to believe sex is an option, not a fact of nature. Yes, some individuals are born with ambiguous genitalia, and some individuals do feel they are in the wrong body. However, these cases are very few. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, gender dysphoria prevalence in the US accounts for 0.005–0.014% of the population for biological males and 0.002–0.003% for biological females. 

“Gender dysphoria” is a psychological condition in which a biological male or female comes to feel that his or her emotional and/or psychological identity does not match his or her biological sex and “experiences clinically significant distress” as a result (American Psychiatric Association 2013).

Document on the Christian response

From this point I want to quote extensively from a document issued last month titled "A Catechesis on the Human Person and Gender Ideology". It was compiled for the Catholic bishop of Arlington, Virginia, Bishop Michael F. Burbidge, to call for charity and compassion for those who are genuinely affected by gender dysphoria or by those with physical complications with genitalia. He also wanted to speak truth to the ideologies that are causing widespread cultural upheaval.

The first point made is this: 

"To be a human person means to be a unity of body and soul from the moment of conception. Thus, the body reveals not only the soul, but the person; the person, as a unity of body and soul, acts through the body. Thus, each person’s body, given by God from the moment of conception, is neither foreign nor a burden, but an integral part of the person."

 Second, and in keeping with the authoritative witness of Scripture (cf. Gen 1:27), the human person is created male or female. The human soul is created to animate and be embodied by one particular, specifically male or female, body. A person’s sex is an immutable biological reality, determined at conception. The sexed body reveals God’s design not only for each individual person, but also for all human beings, by “establishing us in a relationship with other living beings.”[Laudato Sí, no. 155]

"Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity."[ Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2332-2333.] 

In this way, the document cites the "human ecology" that is binding on each person. “The human being, too, has a nature that they must respect and that they cannot manipulate at will.”[LS, no. 155] This is the reality with which we find ourselves. For example, we cannot neglect our body without the consequence of poor health; we cannot expect our body to do what it is not made to do, for example, survive extreme heat or cold.

Third, the differences between man and woman are ordered towards their complementary union in marriage. Indeed, the differences between man and woman, male and female, are unintelligible apart from such a union.

"Man and woman were made 'for each other' — not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be 'helpmate' to the other, for they are equal as persons ('bone of my bones ...') and complementary as masculine and feminine. In marriage, God unites them in such a way that, by forming 'one flesh,' they can transmit human life: 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.' By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents co-operate in a unique way in the Creator's work." [CCC no. 372]

"Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out." [CCC no. 2333]

Sexual difference is at the heart of family life. Children need, and have a right to, a father and a mother. 

What of a person with atypical interests?

Each person is called to accept their body in the same way we accept that we have certain talents or that we don't have wished for traits. This is so, too, for sexual identity:

It is important to note that there may be a variety of ways in which a person may express his or her sexual identity as male or female, according to the norms and practices of a particular time or culture. Moreover, a person may have atypical interests, but this does not change the person’s sexual identity as either male or female.

Speaking to cases of gender dysphoria, the document says:

From a theological perspective, the experience of this interior conflict is not sinful in itself but must be understood as a disorder reflecting the broader disharmony caused by original sin. It is a particularly painful experience of the wounds we all suffer as a result of original sin. Every individual experiencing this condition should be treated with respect, justice, and charity.

What is new in our times, however, is the growing cultural acceptance of the erroneous claim that some people, including children and adolescents, are “in” the “wrong body” and therefore must undergo “gender transition,” either to relieve distress or as an expression of personal autonomy. Sometimes this involves psycho-social changes: The person asserts a new identity, reinforced by a different name, pronouns, and wardrobe. At other times it involves a medical or surgical change: The person seeks chemical or surgical interventions that alter the body’s function and appearance and even impair or destroy otherwise healthy reproductive organs.

At its core, this belief in a “transgender” identity rejects the significance of the sexed body and seeks cultural, medical, and legal validation of the person’s self-defined identity—an approach called “gender affirmation.” Culturally, these claims have brought challenges to law, medicine, education, business, and religious freedom. 

This next part contains the crux of the issue, describing why what we see happening in society so distressing:

We know from biology that a person’s sex is genetically determined at conception and present in every cell of the body. Because the body tells us about ourselves, our biological sex does in fact indicate our inalienable identity as male or female. Thus, so-called “transitioning” might change a person’s appearance and physical traits (hormones, breasts, genitalia, etc.) but does not in fact change the truth of the person’s identity as male or female, a truth reflected in every cell of the body. Indeed, no amount of “masculinizing” or “feminizing” hormones or surgery can make a man into a woman, or a woman into a man.

Speaking the truth in love

How should a Christian relate to a person struggling with gender dysphoria? "A disciple of Christ desires to love all people and to seek their good actively", but also, in love, to speak the truth.

The claim to “be transgender” or the desire to seek “transition” rests on a mistaken view of the human person, rejects the body as a gift from God, and leads to grave harm. To affirm someone in an identity at odds with biological sex or to affirm a person’s desired “transition” is to mislead that person. It involves speaking and interacting with that person in an untruthful manner. Although the law of gradualness might prompt us to discern the best time to communicate the fullness of the truth, in no circumstances can we confirm a person in error.

Indeed, there is ample evidence that “gender affirmation” not only does not resolve a person’s struggles but also can in fact exacerbate them. The acceptance and/or approval of a person’s claimed transgender identity is particularly dangerous in the case of children, whose psychological development is both delicate and incomplete. First and foremost, a child needs to know the truth: He or she has been created male or female, forever. Affirming a child’s distorted self-perception or supporting a child’s desire to “be” someone other than the person (male or female) God created, gravely misleads and confuses the child about “who” he or she is.

In addition, “gender-affirming” medical or surgical interventions cause significant, even irreparable, bodily harm to children and adolescents. These include the use of puberty blockers (in effect, chemical castration) to arrest the natural psychological and physical development of a healthy child, cross-sex hormones to induce the development of opposite-sex, secondary sex characteristics, and surgery to remove an adolescent’s healthy breasts, organs, and/or genitals. These kinds of interventions involve serious mutilations of the human body, and are morally unacceptable.

Although some advocates justify “gender affirmation” as necessary to reduce the risk of suicide, such measures appear to offer only temporary psychological relief, and suicidal risks remain significantly elevated following gender-transitioning measures.[*]

Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to claims that “gender transition” will resolve their difficulties. Long-term studies show “higher rates of mortality, suicidal behavior and psychiatric morbidity in gender-transitioned individuals compared to the general population.”[**] In addition, studies show that children and adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria have high rates of comorbid mental health disorders, such as depression or anxiety, are three to four times more likely to be on the autism spectrum, and are more likely to have suffered from adverse childhood events, including unresolved loss or trauma or abuse.[***] Psychotherapeutic treatments that incorporate “ongoing therapeutic work ... to address unresolved trauma and loss, the maintenance of subjective well-being, and the development of the self,” along with established treatments addressing suicidal ideation are appropriate interventions.[****] Gender transition is not the solution.

Indeed, to disregard or withhold information about the harms of pursuing “transition” or about the benefits of alternative, psychotherapeutic treatments constitutes a failure in both justice and charity. 

How parents can handle the matter 

The document gives this advice:

In addition to your good example and teaching, raising your children also requires vigilance against dangerous ideas and influences. This means the close monitoring of what your children receive via the internet and social media. Transgender ideology is being celebrated, promoted, and pushed out over all social media platforms and even children’s programming. Much of your good work and witness can be undone quickly by a child’s unsupervised or unrestricted internet access.

Another strong source of misinformation about the nature of the person, and the meaning of the body is, regrettably, the public education system. Our region’s public schools provide an excellent education in many regards. However, many also aggressively promote a false understanding of the human person in their advocacy of gender ideology. Current policies compel the use of chosen names and/or pronouns. Staff in many schools are required to affirm a child’s declared “gender identity” and facilitate a child’s “transition,” even in the absence of parental notice or permission. Parents with children in public school must, therefore, discuss specific Catholic teaching on these issues with their children and be even more vigilant and vocal against this false and harmful ideology.

The Church extends her pastoral care especially to those parents whose children suffer gender dysphoria or feel distress over their God-given identity as male or female. Parents in such situations experience a profound sorrow as they witness their children’s suffering. Their sorrow is deepened if their children pursue “gender affirming” therapy, a harmful and life-altering path. Parents are encouraged to find strength and wisdom through the grace of the sacraments, and to seek pastoral support in the parish or diocese.

In difficult circumstances, parents are often tempted to think—or are made to feel—that their Catholic faith is at odds with what is good for their child. In fact, authentic love for their children is always aligned with the truth. In the case of gender dysphoria, this means recognizing that happiness and peace will not be found in rejecting the truth of the human person and the human body. Thus parents must resist simplistic solutions presented by advocates of gender ideology and strive to discover and address the real reasons for their children’s pain and unhappiness.

They should seek out trustworthy clinicians for sound counsel. Meeting with other parents who have been through similar trials also can be a source of strength and support. Under no circumstances should parents seek “gender-affirming” therapy for their children, as it is fundamentally incompatible with the truth of the human person. They should not seek, encourage, or approve any counseling or medical procedures that would confirm mistaken understandings of human sexuality and identity, or lead to (often irreversible) bodily mutilation. Trusting God, parents need to be confident that a child’s ultimate happiness lies in accepting the body as God’s gift and discovering his or her true identity as a son or daughter of God.

Go on in the document, as linked above, to read the warm advice to those actually struggling with gender dysphoria.

To conclude, it's imperative that we give full weight in how we read cultural movements in our society to those endowed with the moral authority, drawn from God's guidance, yes, but also from the observation of humankind going back to the roots of Western civilisation. The moral weakness of the medical profession in this matter is indicative of how fickle the leaders of society can be, and how false their guidance in certain circumstances.

[] See this resource: Sex Change Regret: https://sexchangeregret.com/.

[*]  Hruz PW. Deficiencies in Scientific Evidence for Medical Management of Gender Dysphoria. The Linacre Quarterly. 2020;87(1):34-42.

[**] d’Abrera, J., et al. (2020). Informed consent and childhood gender dysphoria: emerging complexities in diagnosis and treatment. Australasian Psychiatry, 28 (5), 536-538. doi:10.1177/1039856220928863.

        Bränström, R., & Pachankis, J. (2020). Toward Rigorous Methodologies for Strengthening Causal  Inference in the Association Between Gender-Affirming Care and Transgender Individuals’ Mental      Health: Response to Letters. American Journal of Psychiatry, 177(8), 769-772.

[***] Kozlowska, K., et al. G. (2021). Australian children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Clinical presentations and challenges experienced by a multidisciplinary team and gender service. Human Systems: Therapy, Culture, and Attachments, 0(0).

[****] Giovanardi, G., Vitelli, R., Maggiora Vergano, C., Fortunato, A., Chianura, L., Lingiardi, V., & Speranza, A. (2018). Attachment Patterns and Complex Trauma in  a Sample of Adults Diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(60). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00060.